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In Reply to: What are your top ten favourit all time directors------- posted by patrickU on July 2, 2005 at 05:29:54:
Top 10 favorite directors...the ones I can see over and over again?Orson Welles
Sam Peckinpah
Robert Altman
Sergei Eisenstein
Jean Renoir
Charles Chaplin
Buster Keaton
Stanley Kubrick
Tex Avery
Akira KurosawapatrickU, you should have made it "your favorite FORTY film directors"! I can't believe I have put together a list like this without Godard! But this is my list THIS morning!
Follow Ups:
Ha-ha! The same here....
PS: Who is tex Avery? And what is his best that you could recommend to me?
Tex Avery was a cartoon director for Warner Bros. in the Thirties and early Forties, and for MGM in the Forties and Fifties. He was nicknamed "Tex" because he was born and raised in Dallas, and came to Hollywood to work in cartoons in the mid Thirties. When hired by Warner Bros, he helped organize the group at "Termite Terrace," which included Chuck Jones and Friz Freleng and Bob Campbell. In 1940 he took a rabbit character used in two earlier cartoons and created the personality of Bugs Bunny, giving him the line "What's up, Doc?" etc. in the cartoon "A Wild Hare."In 1942 he moved to MGM, where he did his best work. If you have a laserdisc player I recommend the MGM laserdisc set "The Compleat Tex Avery." Here his work centered on refining the American short cartoon to what many consider its zenith, and he was a major influence on fellow MGM workers Hanna-Barbara's work on their "Tom & Jerry" series. If you have seen the "Droopy" cartoons from the Forties and early Fifties, you have seen examples of this work.
In the Fifties he suffered a breakdown from overwork and exhaustion and when he returned to MGM, he saw that the handwriting was on the wall as far as the salad days of the short cartoon. He left MGM and after a short stint working for one last company, organized his own advertising company, making cartoon commercials. If you ever saw the bugs scatter when they heard the word "RAID?!!" you have seen more of Avery's work. In the late Sixties he was asked to animate a commercial using Bugs Bunny and was asked if he knew anything about the character!
Using the guidelines you provided for "10 favorite directors" Avery is one of mine, regardless of the fact that he was an animation director. His cartoons are simply amazing and hold up well today, because he didn't draw them for small children...he made them for himself (his cartoons about wolves lusting after exquisitely-drawn dancing girls will prove that)!
If you have access to programs that show cartoons of the Thirties and Forties, here are my recommendations:
A Wild Hare (1940)
Dumb-Hounded (1943)
Red Hot Riding Hood (1943)
What's Buzzin' Buzzard (1943)
King Size Canary (1947)
Bad Luck Blackie (1949)
Doggone Tired (1949)
Rural Little Riding Hood (1949) my all-time favorite Avery film!
Rock-A-Bye Bear (1952)
The Three Little Pups (1953)Here is a link below to a site with more information on Avery.
This may not be like Victor comparing Dohzhenko to Pudovkin, but great film is great film!
And if you have never seen an Avery cartoon, I urge you to look for them! Bug-eyed double takes, expressive use of sound effects, etc...just amazing work all the way around!
Sorry I could not answer sooner. My internet connection is only intermittently working for the next week!
To this day there have never been any cartoons that compare to Avery's five MGM cartoons featuring Screwball Squirrel. The star is literally insane, abrasive to the point of being unlikeable, with an annoying laugh and a nasal drip that frequently causes him to sniff loudly. 1944's Screwball Squirrel introduced him with a big slap at Disney. We first meet the very cute but realistically drawn Disneyesque Sammy Squirrel. Garish orange grotesque Screwball Squirrel arrives, and Sammy explains that the cartoon will be about Sammy and his forest friends and his fluffy tail. Screwball groans "Oh brother, not that!", lures Sammy behind a tree, and beats the crap out of him. From that point Avery dispenses with all pretense of a plot and the cartoons are non - stop Avery gags and violence. The other characters have no purpose other than to be victims of Screwball Squirrel. Avery throws away all rules of the real world too. As Screwball Squirrel himself observes, "in a cartoon anything can happen." In the fifth and last Screwball Squirrel cartoon, Lonesome Lenny , Avery defied another cartoon convention by killing the character! Anarchic to the end, the dead Screwball Squirrel gets the last word by holding up a sign that says "Sad, ain't it?"A short Windows Media extract of a Screwball Squirrel cartoon can be viewed at the link below.
Hey...Tex did SO many great ones! You try naming just a few to give a representative sample to someone unfamiliar with his work!I love Sammy Squirrel! Everything Avery hated about "fuzzy-wuzzy animals"!
Thanks for reminding about Sammy and all his friends in the forest and his cute tail....
Yeah, picking an Tex Avery "top 10" list is tough, even if you limit yourself to the 67 MGM cartoons. I'd say picking "The Best Avery Cartoon" is easier. I'd go with Little Rural Riding Hood I think. It's got to be the greatest portrayal of male lust in all of cinema, live action or animated.
Bugs Bunny...One of my first love, sitting on a bench at school and looking with a widr open mouth...
LD? Long sold.Yes you are fully right. A great film is a great film. bediede the name Walt Disney my knowledge is a desert. And why because of a ceratin arrogance and because cartoons are mostly considered as a minor art.
Wrongly.
Than you for the time and patience.
Well, the 7-minute-long animated short may not be the apex of film art, but who cares when they are so funny and encapsulate so much of one's culture?You brought up Disney. It is interesting to see how innovative Disney was in the Twenties and Thirties, and how, the minute he could make features, his shorts department began to suffer, with the innovation passing to Warner Bros, M-G-M, and, gosh, what was the name of the company that made the original "Popeye" cartoons? Oh, yeah, Max Fleischer! Just in time for Avery and the other directors I named to make their marks, because Disney never would have allowed some of the things they did in their cartoons after, say, 1933. The more successful he got, the less subversive he got.
John Canemaker and Joe Adamson have written two very good books on Avery, and Leonard Maltin wrote an excellent overall view of the history of the American animated cartoon, if you ever have the time and inclination to pursue Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck, Droopy, and the Wolf, etc., in more depth.
If you would take one book what would it be?
If you want just one book, I suggest the Maltin. It is a very good overview of American animation from the Twenties to the Sixties. His writing on Disney, Avery, etc., lays out the basics of a film genre you say your knowledge of is a "desert," and while not a deep tome, is informative and will cover all the bases.The Adamson book (Tex Avery, King of Cartoons) is like an expanded chapter of the Maltin book, concerning only Avery. It is a quick read, and I don't recommend it unless you find after viewing the Avery cartoons I and Rob Doorack recommend that you need more information about Avery and his work.
The Canamaker book (Tex Avery, the MGM Years 1942-1955) is a lavish look at Avery's MGM years. Great book, with wonderful illustrations, and although it is out of print, one can purchase it used through amazon.com or other sources.
Below is a link to the Maltin book on amazon.com to kind of give you a place to start looking for it:
- http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0452259932/qid=1122170109/sr=1-39/ref=sr_1_39/002-0569498-6229634?v=glance&s=books (Open in New Window)
What is left for me to say? But it is very kind of you. Book oredede of course.
Merci beaucoup.
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